After 50 years of decline, the new Midwest is coming — slowly

As a lifelong Cubs fan, I grasp the concept of a bad century. This helps in contemplating the Midwest, which is five decades into a bad century right now, with no quick turnaround in sight.

The reason is no mystery. The old Midwest did two big things for a living, which are heavy industry and intensive agriculture. Neither now provides the jobs or paychecks to support the people who live here. The Midwest — that heartland stretch from Pittsburgh and Buffalo through Illinois to the Missouri River — is like a worker who lost his job and hasn't found a new one.

The huge mills and factories that once employed millions of Midwesterners on blast furnaces and assembly lines are gone — first to the South, then to Mexico, more recently to China, with automation taking the jobs that outsourcing didn't. Some manufacturing is coming back, but manufacturing jobs aren't: Robots mostly hold those jobs now.

Farm consolidation, driven by technology, has replaced many small farms with a few huge farms. This means fewer farmers, which means fewer customers for the old farm towns that punctuate the Midwestern landscape.

Manufacturing employs about 10 percent of all Midwesterners, no more. Farming employs 2 percent of all Midwesterners. There are good jobs in bioscience and other agribusiness, and advanced high-tech manufacturing provides a good living for some skilled and educated workers. But neither has taken up the slack left by the transformation of the Midwest's two big meal tickets.

The upshot is all too visible. Beyond the glitz of Chicago's Loop and the intellectual oases of the big research universities, much of the Midwest lies on the wrong side of America's tracks. Old farm and mining towns are going or gone. From eastern Iowa through western Pennsylvania, the old industrial towns — Rockford, Flint, Muncie, Dayton — are shrinking cities that may or may not survive. A few cities such as Indianapolis and Columbus had less of an industrial legacy to overcome: They are thriving, largely by inhaling the assets, including the young people, of the gasping states around them.

No New Year's champagne here. This is gloomy stuff. Is there a solution?

WAKING UP

The best news is that the Midwest has cast off its usual reaction to bad news, which is denial. Across the region, leaders know the industrial age is over and the global age is here. People are asking the right question, which is how we compete in a global economy — and how we do it regionally.

The second traditional Midwestern reflex, which is a bloody-minded refusal to cooperate with neighbors, also is fading. This explains the new Tri-State Alliance binding the economic region from Milwaukee through Chicago and into northern Indiana. Cleveland is beginning to talk with its suburbs. Wisconsin's New North region, from Fond du Lac to Green Bay, is showing results. So is the I-380 corridor between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids.

From Grand Rapids to St. Louis, philanthropists are putting their money into transformative economic development. As states slash funding to their big state universities, these schools are exploring cooperation across state lines. The Great Lakes states are waking up to the huge, watery resource on their doorsteps and asking how they can use this mother lode for economic gain, just as they once used their soil and mines to create an economy.

It's early days yet. Much of this is more talk than action. State governments still fight inanely to steal jobs and companies from each other. No big Midwestern university even teaches a course on the Midwest.

But all this talk is an improvement on the silence and denial that shrouded the Midwestern decline for 50 years. Most of the region's governors are up for re-election this year — a golden opportunity to expand that talk into a real debate on our common future.